On Sunday 27 March 2005 02:10 pm, Jaldhar H. Vyas wrote: > Employees maybe not, but the majority of the work in Debian is done by > people who probably spend 20+ hours a week on it and if that's not > professional it certainly isn't what I'd call amateur either. > > Then we have many DDs who just basically react to bugs in their packages > but otherwise don't really pay much attention to project matters. > > It seems rather pointless to hobble the first class just to cater to the > second class and equally pointless to make the second class have to jump > through hoops just because the first class can.
I'm not sure we are working with the same definitions of first and second class. I am talking about the difference between developers who can fly to several meetings a year and developers who cannot. > Well, it's related because as you can tell, I think trying to keep Debian > the way it used to be is a dead end. So the task becomes one of triage. > How can we preserve all the good things such as democracy and openness in > the new order? I don't claim to have all the answers but I think this is > a promising avenue for discussion. In your mind how did Debian "use to be" and what has changed now? > Yes there should be accessible documentation for what all the teams are > upto and electronic systems could automate a lot of that. But eventually > someone has to monitor the electronic systems and then we are right back > to square one. Only those with an inordinate amount of time will be able > monitor everything. Those without time will have to choose the particular > bits they are informed about and will be at sea and unhelpful on the bits > they don't know about. My point is that you can monitor an electronic system *remotely* which is much easier for someone who can't fly to 3 or 4 strategic Debian business meetings a year. > Come on let's be realistic now. There's no guarantee but people _are_ > nice at face-to-face meetings. Now, why don't you be realistic? Physical meetings are not a silver bullet for making people play nicely together. Most disagreements have some philosophical basis that is orthogonal to the communications medium. > You missed the low-intensity part. In fact it is basically the idea > behind the US consitutions systems of checks and balances. Or > alternatively look at the Mafia's system which by "organizing" crime > actually substantially reduced the amount of killing and risk to innocent > bystanders. Yet the tribal nature of the Mafia family prevented the > "commission" from degenerating into a bureaucracy -- which is just as > inimical to liberty as anarchy. Petty street crime is "low intensity" when compared with a full-scale war but I think the analogies are not serving us. If you are saying that an equilibrium of competing small organizations is the most free and efficient system then I think we agree. One key is to avoid the creation of oligopilies or monopolies. That is exactly why I'm against these physical meetings for decision making. -- Ean Schuessler, CTO Brainfood, Inc. http://www.brainfood.com -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]